October has started in disney with the betrayal and surprise erasure of the saga of Indiana Jones from the catalog of its streaming platform. Well, not all. It still resists, like the irreducible village of the Gauls in Asterix, the last title where the most famous archaeologist in the history of cinema retired and hung up his hat and whip, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny‘. A decision that has left thousands of fans stunned and has placed them in front of a scenario that they thought they would never see after the multinational bought Lucasfilms in 2012 for a whopping 4 billion dollars. But it seems that the rights to the saga were not as well protected as those of Star Wars, of which we can find absolutely everything without leaving the application.
The agreement included that after a time the rights to films directed by Steven Spielberg They would return to Paramount and these are still in the production company’s streaming platform. SkyShowtime. So, before anyone panics, we are not witnessing the platform erasure of the iconic character immortalized by Harrison Ford. But we do find ourselves with another incomprehensible case of mythical sagas that can only be enjoyed in pieces and by jumping through a labyrinth of platforms, which every day move further away from being that ideal video store that they sold us.
This is not a new phenomenon and fans of ‘Terminatorone of the great eighties sagas of which we could not enjoy any compilation pack due to the dispersion of the rights for each of its deliveries. Something very similar to what happened to Indiana Jones happened this week in Netflix with another emblematic saga of the 80s and whose return was one of the hits of the big red N of this recently ended summer: ‘Super detective in Hollywood‘. The return of Eddie Murphy to the character of Axel Foley has responded to expectations and there is an intention to film new installments. However, the three original films have left the platform and also remain on SkyShowtime. Only the fourth film in the saga remains on Netflix.
It is not the first time that this has happened with another iconic saga from the eighties and if not ask the protagonists of ‘Cobra Kai’. The movies of Karate Kid They have been entering and leaving their catalog. Now that it seems that we are reaching the end of the series, the saga is once again complete. But for how long? And that’s not to mention when they played skipped seasons of ‘Mad Men’.
If anyone was hoping that these disappearing titles may have found a stable home on the new platform, they better not get too excited. SkyShowtime has also been characterized by these same surprise eliminations and has been stingy with its classic series, with the addition of sometimes being the only place where they could be enjoyed. We also had the last one at the end of this summer with the suppression of the ‘Star Trek’ saga films prior to the relaunch of JJ Abrams in 2009. A painful decision for Trekkies who aspired for that platform to become the natural home of the galactic franchise in its entirety, after Paramount took Discovery from Netflix.
Along with the first ten films, SkyShowtime has cut series such as ‘Deep Space 9’, ‘Voyager’ and ‘Enterprise’. Titles that provided hours and hours of content and that I doubt fans have had time to enjoy in the few months they have been there. The good news is that these series are still on Netflix and broadcast online in Pluto TV. The bad news is that the movies are nowhere to be found. In order to enjoy all the titles in the extensive franchise, you have to navigate between three different platforms.
TO amazonOn the other hand, the move of buying the rights to the entire saga turned out well. James Bondalthough I don’t know very well what to do with them. There are months in which all the movies can be enjoyed by subscribers and others where in order to see them you have to pay an additional rental price. But at least they are all there. On the other hand, after spending millions to make its version of ‘The Lord of the Rings’, HBO Max is not releasing its treasure with the movies. Like it has everything harry potter in full.
In the same way that at Disney you can see all of Star Wars, but not all of Marvel. The first Iron Man and Hulk films after the creation of the marve studioslas well as the Spiderman films with Tom Holland They are big holes in the catalog. In the competition, from the dispersion of the titles of D.C. another article would be needed. On the other hand, with the purchase of Fox from Disney, very succulent sagas were incorporated for platforms such as Alien, Predator and the extensive filmography of ‘‘planet of the apes’.
We do not know whether this situation is the result of a lack of interest in the classical material that generated that nostalgia that paradoxically seek to awaken; or if rival companies have known find holes in rights agreements to detract from the competition’s catalogue. Although they leave a hole in the hearts of the fans. Some of us seem to be doomed to remain lost in nostalgia.
